Archive for category art/music

After months of work, I’ve finally finished a second painting of Jimi Hendrix. Unlike the first, this one is for sale. Painted in oils on canvas, it measures roughly 600 mm x 500 mm. Enquiries to: chrisniblock@hotmail.co.uk. If Jimi isn’t your favourite, I’m happy to accept commissions for other rock stars, screen goddesses and even your dear old uncle Fred!

The painting is based on a famous photograph by Gered Mankowitz, the British photographer who has chronicled the rock music scene for the last forty years. He photographed Hendrix in 1967 at his studio in Picadilly. He found him to be a “quiet, humble and modest man. He wasn’t remotely the sort of wild man of rock n’ roll that people have come to think of him as.”

I think this comes across in this picture, as does Hendrix’s sense of humour. Some of Gered Mankowitz’s portraits are now part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

I painted this portrait of Jimi Hendrix back in 2006. It’s based on a photo from the album sleeve of Electric Ladyland. I could have sold it several times over but I had already made a present of it to my partner Maggie. Accurately rendering the colours and textures of the outfit Hendrix was wearing proved to be the hardest part for me. The outfit consists of what appears to be a velvet jacket, worn over a black, leather waistcoat and shirt of many colours which subtly blend into one another. It took many hours of work to get it right.

Like this:

This recently completed painting is based on a photograph of Taylor Swift, the American country pop singer/songwriter, musician and actress. In order to give it a ‘bluesy’ feel I changed the colour palette, substituting the colder shades of blue and purple for the original’s much warmer tones.